why do people on letsrun hate Galloway

Since you're not registered, you clearly aren't the real Greg, but just for clarification, I play pretty much every single day that I am home for at least an hour. Once in a great while I'll play the guitar for a long time so that my piano playing is less than an hour, but that's rare. Usually it's 60-75 minutes of piano playing followed by 20-30 minutes of guitar.

I don't know if Galloway has modified his opinion, but at one point, he claimed that even elites would benefit from taking walk breaks. That's what most serious runners take offense to.

That said, Gallowalking works well for the majority of runners if you define majority as the average finishing time for marathons... currently 4:22 for men and 5:23(?)-ish for women.

Most of these slower than 10 min/mile marathoners (not all!) simply aren't fit enough to run the same pace for an entire marathon so they slow down a lot from mile 20 to the finish. Gallowalking helps them maintain their pace for longer.

I personally think the racing benefits of the Galloway method disappear at paces faster than 8 min/mile. However, there are still benefits from occasional Galloway training in that it reduces the risk of injury because running form doesn't deteriorate as much due to the walk breaks and you can recover faster for the next day's effort. That's my firsthand experience.

Question:

Why are piano players called pianists but race car drivers aren't called racists?

The best way to get fit is diet, walking, and strength training. Runners don’t want to hear this but Galloway has known it a long time.

I use this methods with first year runners. Guess what! In time, they move from not being able to run one mile to being able to string together several. I have even had an exchange student who used the method write me a very nice letter to tell me that she hated running before she met me. I do not use it with a runner beyond the first season, but I use it with every runner who has never run before.

Bravo! I do much the same with my incoming freshman and new kids that don't have a running background. At the beginning of summer, they are instructed to run 3 minutes/walk 3 minutes for a total of one hour, four days a week. After three weeks, it goes 4/2 and then after another 3-4 weeks they go 5/1. When they arrive for pre-season practices, most everyone that followed the plan can run non-stop for an hour. I also find that I hear far less about shin splints and sore knees because run/walk allows them to become strong over time.

This year. I used it with an incoming freshman girl. She walked/ran for about a week, but could not run two miles straight when she started. Week 4, she ran six miles in one run. Her MS coach asked what my secret was, and I told her it was the Galloway method. The only difference from what you do and what I did is that I told her to run as longas possible, and walk when necessary, but limit the walk to a certain amount of time.

Bottom line: it works for beginners.

Galloway is teaching the masses.

The problem with LRC is that some of us think that we are elite because we run 30 miles a week.

They do, actually. It used to be called ‘cruise intervals’. Now they call it ‘double threshold’.